Avaliação do nível de eficiência da fortificação do açúcar com vitamina A na linha de processamento do açúcar

Abstract

The World Health Organization has classified vitamin A deficiency as a health problem. public health, as it affects one in three children aged 6 and 59 months, with the highest rates in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia and especially in developing countries. Mozambique is one of the most recent countries to become the fortification of basic foods such as wheat flour, corn flour, cooking oil, salt and sugar, mandatory, in order to prevent deficiency of micronutrients such as iron, iodine and vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency leads to death or diseases such as night blindness, beriberi, pellagra, scurvy, rickets and osteomalacia. There are four main strategies to improve malnutrition in micronutrients: nutritional education that leads to greater diversity and quality of diets; food fortification; supplementation; and disease control measures. An increasingly An important part of the global strategy is the large-scale fortification of staple foods consumed regularly in diets consumed around the world. The present study aimed to an assessment of the efficiency level of sugar fortification with vitamin A in the sugar processing, through retrospective analysis of records of laboratory results from self-control as a way of knowing the degree of compliance with the fortification recommended by legislation. The study also included the analysis of 4 batches (20 samples) of sugar to determine of vitamin A levels in milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) using BioAnalyt's iCheck TM method fluoro. The data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 software. a simple descriptive statistical analysis for the study variables, with means and standard deviation. The average levels of vitamin A between the sampling sites were evaluated using Analysis of Variance (A NOVA), complemented with the Tukey Test, at 5% significance, for the evaluation statistical difference in vitamin A content between samples. The average level of vitamin A in fortified sugar samples collected from the sugar industry in Maputo province was 12.84 ± 9.47 mg/kg. Regarding the degree of compliance at the collection points, the laboratory presented lower number of non-conforming lots (12.5%) in relation to packaging (75%). Of the 20 lots analyzed, 43.75% (5/20) of the lots were found to be non-compliant and 56.25% (15/20) of the lots were in compliance with current legislation as they had vitamin A levels on average 10 – 30 mg/kg. In general, the level of vitamin A in the fortified sugar samples analyzed in the present study, was on average within the standard established by legislation, however there were samples that presented vitamin A levels outside the established standard (TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)